Morgan Weiland

Morgan N. Weiland is an attorney and PhD candidate at Stanford University specializing in speech, press, and technology law and ethics. She proposed, helped design, and is in the process of completing the first joint degree program between Stanford Law School, where she received her JD in 2015, and Stanford's Communication Department, where she is a PhD candidate.

She is a Junior Affiliate Scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society. Weiland will be clerking for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals during the 2018-19 term. She is admitted to the California Bar.

Her scholarship, legal practice, and policy work sit at the intersection of First Amendment doctrine, networked media, and technological change. Please visit her website for her CV and publications, and follow her on Twitter @morganweiland.

Today, the Stanford Law Review published my very first single-authored publication, “Expanding the Periphery and Threatening the Core: The Ascendant Libertarian Speech Tradition.” This article contributes to the legal scholarly literature about the rise in the mid-to-late twentieth century

Nailing down the definitive literature on First Amendment expressive freedoms is a tricky task. What’s the consensus among scholars about the classics? Even more complex is figuring out what emerging scholarship on the intersection of speech and press freedoms with new media technologies will have a lasting impact.

A few weeks ago, after I published a blog post raising the question of what might happen to CDA 230 when internet intermediaries like Facebook invoke First Amendment protections – which civil liberties lawyers’ were calling on Facebook to do in the wake of the controversy over its trending newsfeed – I was fortunate enough to have a sustained email exchange with UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh.

Though much attention is focused on the court’s vindication of the FCC’s reclassification of ISPs as common carriers under Title II, the court also ensured significant protection of public interest regulations from spurious First Amendment arguments.

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Abstract

Though scholars have identified the expanding scope of First Amendment speech doctrine, little attention has been paid to the theoretical transformation happening inside the doctrine that has accompanied its outward creep. Taking up this overlooked perspective, this Article uncovers a new speech theory: the libertarian tradition. This new tradition both is generative of the doctrine’s expansion and risks undermining the First Amendment’s theoretical foundations.

After a year of debates and a month before the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC’s) rulemaking on network neutrality, the GOP has finally joined the party. Through a draft bill released late last week, congressional Republicans have taken a step in the direction of supporting network neutrality. That’s a good thing, and moves them closer to the existing consensus. Roughly four million Americans submitted comments to the FCC calling for real network neutrality rules over the past year, and polls show that both Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly support a ban on fast lanes.

Imagine that you are participating in a protest on a university campus. The campus police ask everyone to leave. Some protestors refuse to move, and suddenly they are doused with pepper spray by campus police. You pull out your cell phone and start recording, asking protestors to describe what happened. After some editing, you post the video to YouTube. But according to the two federal shield laws being considered by Congress, you likely would not qualify as a journalist—and consequently would not enjoy the right to protect your sources.

"But Andrew McLaughlin, the cofounder of Higher Ground Labs, a company that invests in technology to help progressive candidates, believes that platforms should suppress propaganda in ad space. “Despite their best intentions, tech companies have built systems that are so open to manipulation by bots and trolls and other techniques that they effectively reward propaganda,” he says.

"For Morgan Weiland, PhD candidate and junior associate researcher at the Center for Internet & Society at Stanford Law School, the discussion is very complicated and she does not see a solution in the short or medium term.

"The risk of closing pages or removing content from white supremacists is what happens tomorrow, someone can do the same with a page from the Black Lives Matter movement ," Weiland says in an interview with BBC World.

"Where you put the limit, how you avoid falling into censorship ... are very delicate issues,""

"Morgan Weiland, an affiliate scholar with Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, says the blocked tweeters’ complaint could air key questions if it ends up in court. Does the public forum concept apply in privately run social media? Does it matter if an account is a politician’s personal account, not an official one?"

"Facebook's highly personalized algorithmic curation of its users' newsfeeds falls in a legal gray area with respect to CDA 230. As you know, CDA 230 provides immunity for "interactive computer services," drawing a line between that category and "information content providers." But it's not entirely clear when the former becomes the latter; in other words, it's not clear when an intermediary engages in enough editing of third-party content that it becomes an "information content provider" and loses CDA 230 immunity.

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Attorney and scholar Morgan Weiland ’06 will present Carleton College’s weekly convocation on Friday, April 22 from 10:50 to 11:50 a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. A leader in the study of the law and policy around the internet and other emerging technologies, Weiland has been active in policy debates surrounding telecommunications, mass surveillance, and network neutrality.

Carleton convocations are free and open to the public. They are also recorded and archived for online viewing at go.carleton.edu/convo/.

From the First Amendment to Net Neutrality. How Media Regulation Affects What We Say

Does the FCC's recent ruling on net neutrality promise more equal media access? Or will it lead to years of divisive litigation? FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will discuss implications of the new rules and the role of media regulation in creating a free press; Victor Pickard of the University of Pennsylvania will look at how media regulation choices in the 1940s affect us today; Stanford's Morgan Weiland will explain what the proposed federal shield law means for journalists.

President Trump has blocked Twitter followers on his personal feed--raising questions, and a lawsuit, about first amendment rights on social media. An expert on free speech in the online world says the case has wide implications for public figures on all forms of social media.

From the First Amendment to net neutrality, How does media regulation affect what we say? The Sixth Annual Rebele Symposium addressed this topic with Mignon Clyburn, Victor Pickard, and Morgan Weiland. Ted Glasser and Christine Larson moderated the event.